Malmö University Publications
Change search
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf
Imagining Non-Speciesism
Malmö University, Faculty of Culture and Society (KS), School of Arts and Communication (K3).
2018 (English)Conference paper, Published paper (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

What will a world that rejects speciesism (oppression and exploitation on the grounds of belonging to a certain species (Singer, 2009/1975)) be like? How will we understand ourselves in relation to other animals in this world? How will we engage with one another in such a society? What kind of animal encounters can still take place? These are fundamental questions to thinkwith in the attempt to imagine a world that does not regard other animals as lesser beings. However, in our current frameworks for thinking about speciesism, we mainly know what we do not want. It remains challenging to envision what the alternatives actually look like or how they can be described. The language we have, to articulate our thoughts about oppression in general, is often focused on the systems we wish to counter or reject: words like non-speciesism, postcolonialism, post-humanism, or post-capitalism. It is important to give problems a name in order to recognize them as problems (Ahmed, 2017). However, this is also where we encounter the limits of our thinking-with these kinds of words. We come up against something we cannot resolve, because we do not use a framework for thinking beyond the problems we encounter. Following a feminist design theory perspective, in this talk I will use the term ‘multispeciesism’ to articulate a ‘worldview’ (Redström, 2017) (or a ‘concept’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1994/1991)) that we can philosophize with and appropriate to actively design alternative less-speciesist futures. I attempt to articulate this ‘multispeciesist worldview’ further by curating stories of our engagements and encounters with animals that are just big enough to inspire alternative ways of thinking but do not attempt to explain or define our relationships with other beings once and for all. They consist of stories of surprises, joy, play, and unexpected responses we get from interacting with other animals (Haraway, 2016), they involve intense moments of caring for other species (Puig de La Bellacasa, 2017), they consist of deliberate practices of self-fashioning and restructuring our lives (Foucault, 1988; Gibson-Graham, 2008), and they encompass constructions of hopeful or possible utopian narratives (Le Guin, 2016; Zylinska, 2014). Ideas of alternative futures do not arise out of nowhere: they are inscribed in the present (Berardi, 2017). I suggest that by collecting and curating a collection of less-speciesist instances that we share with other animals we can actively construct the raw material that can inspire alternative futures.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2018.
Keywords [en]
speciesism, design, alternative futures, animals
National Category
Humanities and the Arts
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-10823Local ID: 28045OAI: oai:DiVA.org:mau-10823DiVA, id: diva2:1407866
Conference
Rethinking Animality Conference, Santiago de Compostela, Spain (September 26-28)
Available from: 2020-02-29 Created: 2020-02-29 Last updated: 2020-06-02Bibliographically approved

Open Access in DiVA

fulltext(850 kB)184 downloads
File information
File name FULLTEXT01.pdfFile size 850 kBChecksum SHA-512
ca6dbbdb53b8ac5770190f133c3657a9cb1cfe32ae5db8cc253904ea1ebdfd2b877d35410af34371a093cf4121a88ac68c2ed85716fd560520f0f838b1a86874
Type fulltextMimetype application/pdf

Other links

https://sites.google.com/view/rethinkinganimality/program

Authority records

Westerlaken, Michelle

Search in DiVA

By author/editor
Westerlaken, Michelle
By organisation
School of Arts and Communication (K3)
Humanities and the Arts

Search outside of DiVA

GoogleGoogle Scholar
Total: 184 downloads
The number of downloads is the sum of all downloads of full texts. It may include eg previous versions that are now no longer available

urn-nbn

Altmetric score

urn-nbn
Total: 165 hits
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf